Newsreading? My boy of 4 could do it

John Humphrys declared yesterday that news reading is so easy his own four-year-old son could almost do it.

The presenter of Radio 4's Today programme told an audience: 'I used to read the Nine O'Clock News. Reading the news isn't work, whatever anybody says. You get paid a lot of money and it requires no brain. I have a four-year-old and I think he'll be ready in a couple of months.'

Humphrys was speaking at the Guardian Hay Festival, Britain's most prestigious literary festival, in the village of Hay-on-Wye. Twenty thousand people listened to speakers including actress Goldie Hawn, promoting her memoir, Alexander McCall Smith, author of The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and Peter Brook, the distinguished theatre and film director.

Humphrys, who has written a book about declining standards in grammar, included his younger Today colleagues in the criticism. 'We get our pick of the best of the graduates from Oxford and Cambridge and all the rest of it,' he said. 'They are terrific people, they're very bright and well educated in all sorts of ways, but they cannot string a single sentence together.'

He showed a gift for stand-up comedy, with gags at the expense of Peter Mandelson, John Prescott, Gordon Brown and John Major and Edwina Currie. He insisted: 'I trust politicians as much as I trust anybody else in the world, which is quite a lot.'

He also recalled securing an interview with Tony Blair on the final morning of the recent general election campaign. 'I'd been reading the Sun newspaper and you may remember it had this story, an extraordinary interview, in which he and Cherie had discussed their love life.

'She said, "He's very fit." The photographer said, "What do you mean, fit? You mean he does it a lot?" We're talking about the great statesmanlike language of our time here, aren't we? You can just imagine Winston Churchill engaging in this repartee, or Harold Macmillan.

' "Oh yes, five times a night, no problem!" said Cherie.

'Anyway, I was reading this stuff and wasn't doing the interview for hours and hours, so I thought I'd go for a quick pee before he arrived. I went in and standing there was the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Tony Blair. There was only one urinal so I stood next to him. He said, "Hello John, what are you doing here?" which I thought was a rather stupid question. I couldn't think what to say. All I could think about was saying: "Gosh, having read the Sun this morning, I'm surprised you can stand so close to the urinal."'

Goldie Hawn was asked if she would consider a role on the West End stage. 'That could be fun,' she said. 'But I couldn't do it for a year - it would get repetitive.'

Rory Bremner was presented with an award from the charity Listening Books. The Hay Festival added an 1850 first edition of David Copperfield . 'I'm very touched,' Bremner said.